I'm terrified for the next generation of kids/teens who are convinced into making permanent decisions that effect you for life, for the wrong reasons

I think that lawsuits are going to unravel this whole craze in a decade or so. It seems like it's going to go on forever, but they said the same about other psychiatric fads in the past. Therapists who affirmed and implanted false memories of abuse, therapists who affirmed and encouraged 'multiple personality disorder' in patients, therapists who encouraged children to construct fantasies of satanic cults and cut ties with their families.

All of these psychiatric fads began to die when the lawsuits started increasing in frequency and insurance pulled support for all of their "treatments" which caused problems for many of their patients. If insurance companies begin to pull support for adolescent transition, or put much harsher requirements on people wanting to transition medically, and if the general public are aware of many peoples regret, the fad will begin to die.

Sorry, that sounds like a fake story. It’s easy for adults to get hormones like i did at 18. But 12 year old children getting puberty blockers always requires child assessments over a year or more. No way would your parents just get given blockers and hormones, without you getting 1 on 1 counselling with the doctor. This is total BS 😂

Edit: OPs subsequent comments clearly show this post is a lie.

Two children I used to babysit are both transitioning now, though. It seems like it’s becoming more common. Thoughts?

Yes, transitioning children is becoming more common, and there is a reason. Basically more people are transitioning kids now because it has become the "thing to do" with effeminate boys who say they want to be girls. Previously, most parents said no and the kid would go through a period of distress and usually accept he was male. A minority would persist in gender dysphoria and by puberty they would let them transition.

This has changed with the transgender rights movement emerging since 2014 or so.

Here is a writeup from professors Eric Vilain and J. Michael Bailey from 2015:

Since the age of 2, he has been a very different kind of boy. He enjoys wearing his mother’s shoes and his sister’s dresses. He likes to play with girls and hates playing with boys, who are too rough.

Now 5, he has told you that he wants to be a girl. In fact, he insists that he is a girl. Your son isn’t just feminine; he is unhappy being a boy. He has gender dysphoria.You love him and you want him to be happy. But you’re worried. Some older kids have started to tease him, and some parents have expressed disapproval.

It seems you have two choices. You could insist that he is a boy and try to put an end to behaviors such as cross-dressing and saying that he is a girl. The alternative is to let him be a girl: grow long hair, choose a new name, dress as he (or “she”) pleases, and when it is time, obtain the necessary hormones and surgeries for a female body.

As scientists who study gender and sexuality, we can tell you confidently: At this point no one knows what is better for your son.

We do know a lot about such boys. This includes some important facts rarely mentioned in the discussion about how they should be raised. We suspect this is because those facts are inconvenient to the narratives that have come to predominate.

Perhaps the most influential account is that gender dysphoric children have the minds and brains of the other sex, adult transgenderism is inevitable, and early transition to the other sex is the only humane option.

But this narrative is clearly wrong in one respect. Gender dysphoric children have not usually become transgender adults. For example, the large majority of gender dysphoric boys studied so far have become young men content to remain male. More than 80% adjusted by adolescence.

Granted, the available research was conducted at a time when parents almost always encouraged their gender dysphoric children to accept their birth sex. And this is changing.

For example, the parents of Jazz Jennings, a transgender teen and YouTube celebrity, let their son live as a girl starting at age 5, and all the evidence suggests that she will remain female. The little data we have indicate that parental acquiescence leads to persistence.

As more and more parents let their gender dysphoric boys live as girls, the percentage of persisters may increase dramatically.

But, again, we don’t yet know whether it’s better to encourage adjustment or persistence.(We have focused on gender dysphoric boys because their parents have contacted us much more often than parents of similar girls. Moreover, many fewer gender dysphoric girls have been studied scientifically. The same basic facts appear to be true for both sexes, however.)

Let’s take a look at the likely life trajectories of two imagined gender dysphoric boys: David, whose parents insist he stay David, and Max, whose parents allow him to become a girl, changing his name to Maxine.

In the short run, David will experience more psychological pain than Maxine. Adjustment to being a boy necessarily means accepting that he can’t be a girl, something he desperately wants. Still, most gender dysphoric boys have managed the mental transition.

In the long run, Maxine will need serious medical interventions. In late childhood she will need hormones to block puberty; she will then take estrogen for the rest of her life. Eventually, she may want genital surgery. Although this surgery is usually satisfactory, side effects requiring additional surgery are not uncommon.

Each way has obvious advantages and disadvantages. We would prefer to save David the greater pain he will endure during childhood. And we would prefer to save Maxine the serious medical interventions and possible side effects.

Despite the lack of clarity in this debate, the Obama administration recently appeared to take sides, issuing a statement that decried the use of “conversion therapy” to change either sexual orientation or gender identity.

President Obama is correct to oppose sexual orientation conversion therapy, which is usually offered because of religious objections to homosexuality, and which doesn’t work. But therapy to help a pre-adolescent child overcome gender dysphoria can be entirely different. Some professionals who do this therapy have no moral issue with transgenderism but are trying to help children avoid later medical stress. That is a reasonable goal, even if it is not the only possible goal.

One impetus for the president’s statement was the tragic case of Leelah (born Joshua) Alcorn, a 17-year-old who committed suicide, blaming her parents for pressuring her to engage in religiously oriented conversion therapy. We oppose that kind of therapy because of its message: “Transgenderism is morally wrong.” By Leelah’s age, at any rate, no amount of psychotherapy, of any kind, would have been able to change her gender identity.

But Obama lumped together all therapies, regardless of their motivation, target age and method. Banning all therapists from helping families trying to alleviate children’s gender dysphoria would be premature, a triumph of ideology over science.

The president can set a better example by pausing at the limits of our knowledge and encouraging scientists to collect the data we need. Until we have it, let’s be careful about telling the well-meaning parents of gender dysphoric children what to do.

(source)

Obviously things may be different for you. You may well be a "persister'. But the fact your parents agreed to paediatric transition also suggests they may well have had some reservations about seeing you as a feminine male, and felt more comfort with you becoming a "straight girl".

It's funny because conservatives on social media usually are so opposed to child transitioning. However, Ken Zucker has said plenty of christians in his clinic have expressed they would rather do child transitioning than have a feminine gay son.

The "passing" thing seems a big thing for you. But would you "pass" as a man, after being on hormones so long? All you can do is figure out how you want to live.

Don’t come into our spaces and tell outrageous stories without providing proof. I’ve been through that system, I’m a detrans woman. I find it annoying when people with a political agenda come on here and tell obvious lies.

If any parent was able to secure puberty blockers for their child like that without seeing the child, it would be a medical lawsuit you could win easily. It’s a ridiculous story and clearly written by someone who has a vague but misinformed understanding of how pre pubescent transitioning even works.

I don't think low circulating testosterone has been shown to cause gender dysphoria. For example, there have been attempts to administer adult transgender women with testosterone and it did not alleviate gender dysphoria. I have also read a few accounts now of MTF who tried to do testosterone because they really didn't want to be trans.

No offence to your mother, but a nurse should probably defer to an endocrinologist on this. She is only trying to be helpful though.

Even as a detrans person I accept some people will just have dysphoria that isn't treatable or won't go away, I've read enough accounts of people who attempted to find another fix and they didn't work for them.

You should certainly explore the issue though with an endocrinologist.

Interesting. Idk if you know this but typically the sexual arousal to becoming a woman is referred to as autogynephilia, and seems to be the primary motivator of transition in transwomen who are attracted to women. Not saying there is anything wrong with it, you can't help it. But it seems to be almost a 'spectrum' in that some autogynephilic guys have very strong arousal to it that ultimately fuel their desire to transition. Others have weaker desires and they just keep it as a sexual thing in private (e.g. crossdressing etc).

Idk if this applies to you, but being self aware about this attraction seems quite important to not going crazy.

did you have like sexual desires to be a woman? or was this just a weird phase of whatever. Overall it didn't really sound like you were close to transitioning, just seems like adolescent transient 'figuring myself out' shit. But I'm glad to hear it ended ok.

That doesn’t say much about mercury levels being higher than normal, it’s about parasites and mercury? Mercury doesn’t come from civilisation lol. It comes from the earths crust like coal.

I do understand how hormones work, there is a 100 year history of studies investigating hormones and brain development. I’ve read all of Simon LeVays books on it.

Uh, Samoan Fa’afafine existed prior to colonisation. Mercury is a naturally occurring substance and Japanese people have been eating fish for centuries. Yet no more than 2% of Japanese men are gay in anonymous polls. Hmm?

You’d be more well served by finding studies which showed mercury could feminize male brain structure. As far as I know, I don’t think that’s been shown. Other hormones have though.

BTW, most hormone effects work prenatally in their arrangement of the brain. Circulating hormones have not been proven to effect sexual orientation (in men).

Are there more gender issues in children in places like Russia, or India, where children are abused at a substantially higher rate? I see no evidence dysphoria is higher there. They would have noticed, especially in young kids, because gender dysphoria manifests so obviously in them. In many countries, it's basically normal to abuse your child, whereas in most western countries it only happens to a minority.

I'm detrans, I'm all for research, but this interpretation seems pretty bad. I've read a lot on behavior genetics in the past year. Mental instability usually runs in families for genetic reasons rather than social environmental ones. Parents who mistreat their parents pass on their genes for psychological problems to their children. For example, see this twin/genetic study on borderline personality disorder found that the 'environmental' factors in BPD are non-social, not trauma, and mostly genetic in nature.

One reason for higher rates of childhood abuse in transwomen and transmen includes the fact that both subgroups are usually highly gender nonconforming in childhood. Fathers often abuse their highly feminine sons. There is plenty of research to back this up, at least in gay men, because heterosexual men who were also feminine in childhood experience higher rates of abuse than boys who were masculine: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1079063215618378

In other words, correlation isn't causation. We should of course remain open minded but my hunch about this is that it's usually wrong.

Some lesbians felt they were nudged towards transition FTM because of a trauma though. It may be true, but the feeling it is true is not sufficient evidence for it to be true. Many people feel their BPD is caused by trauma, but the evidence hasn't supported it. Many people think they are homosexual due to demonic possession too. Masculine lesbians like myself were already on a 'knifes edge' and find ourselves stuck between unattainable female roles and just sliding into a mans role... so I don't think trauma alone is a cause of dysphoria because you'd see it manifesting in societies with high rates of abuse, but it doesn't.

I transitioned as an adult, where informed consent is allowed. Children at the age you claimed in your story require significant assessment first and strong interest from the child. In your story you simply skip over that and claim your mother just got PB and hormones and started drugging you. Not how it works at all.